Harold Myerson offers a fascinating take on the evolution - or should I say devolution? - of the US economy over the past 30 years. Here's just one small part of an article you really must read in full.
In an era of globalization, when U.S.-based transnational corporations no longer think of themselves as American entities, the reconstruction of a vibrant American economy can no longer be left to the private sector. Creating a well-paid, secure, sizable U.S. work force is no longer necessarily a part of these corporations' business plans. Indeed, such a goal is more characteristically inimical to these corporations' business plans, since a flexible labor force increasingly paid by world labor standards is the goal to which a growing number of these companies aspire.
And so it falls to government to rebuild a thriving middle class. The project, as I see it, has several elements....[Ed Note: Go. Read.]
Capitalism creates prosperity. Governments create the legal and social environments in which prosperity can be broadly shared. By assuming the responsibility for benefit programs employers no longer offer, investing in strategic industries, offering serious vocational education programs, creating "green jobs" and human-service jobs requiring credentialing and offering commensurate pay, and amending labor law so it unambiguously permits workers to join unions, our government can begin the arduous and utterly necessary work of rebuilding the American middle class and setting the nation's economy on a far sounder footing. These are fundamental tasks—promoting the general welfare, as the Preamble to our Constitution puts it—from which our government has been AWOL for far too long.
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